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Category: Brexit

“The reason I talk to myself is because I’m the only one whose answers I accept” – George Carlin

Thanks to my wife, who has these things called friends, I recently had the pleasure of spending a festive evening drinking in the company of breeders. Predictably, conversation soon turned around to the topic of their oiks, which usually results in me frantically reaching for a soothing glug of alcohol. This time though, before I could reach for some liquid amnesia, my interest was ignited by the discussion.

Should you tell your urchin that Santa doesn’t exist thus shattering the first of many childhood dreams? The general consensus was that no, you should play along to preserve the sanctimony of innocent youth. I did offer up the Russell Brand hypothesis that you should tell your offspring about the great Father Christmas fraud, as it will shatter their parental trust when they find out that you’ve lied to them for years, but this was roundly discredited on the grounds that it would ruin Christmas.

Brand – Teller of dangerous truths!

And for once I agree with them. Not because it would ruin Christmas, there’s plenty of other things that already do that (rampant materialism, extended family and friends, the ever increasingly pathetic John Lewis music etc.). But because Brand is essentially preventing his brat from learning an essential lesson in life: People are bastard liars!

Imagine a world built on Brand’s hypothesis. You are told that Santa is effectively as real as Snow White. Whilst your trust in adults grows, you fail to learn that everybody has the potential to be a lying bastard. Now you may think that this is a good thing. Surely a less cynical world would be a more charming, quaint place to live in. You would be wrong.

Imagine a world where the majority of people believe that Boris Johnson is going to send £350m from the EU to help the NHS. Bad example. Imagine a world where tens of millions of registered voters believe that Trump is going to make America great again. Errrmm. OK, so a significant number of people are idiots, but imagine the damage that could be done if in addition to these idiots we create an increasing number of gullible people who believe everything that they are told. Trump would get a second term. Johnson would be PM. Everyone would believe that it is butter. Quite frankly, that is not a dystopian vision of the future that I want to see come to fruition.

All…

lying…

bastards!

Learning that people lie, including your parents, all the time is a good thing. It means that those who have some modicum of intellectual capacity will question things. They’ll still be in the minority, but they have a vital finger in the wall of the leaky dam that is holding back a tidal wave of idiocy. If you really love your tyke you’ll lie to them about the existence of Santa, destroy any credibility that you hold in their eyes (let’s face it, it’ll happen anyway) and give them the gift that keeps on giving: scepticism.

The British public are now demonstrating levels of stupidity that even I thought they couldn’t reach. People who voted to leave are now upset that this means that we are going to leave. Who would have thought that? The outrage! Just today at the estate agents a woman was asking “do you think that they’ll let us vote again, because we’re only finding out what it means now”. How the hell did these people decide on which way to vote? Coin toss? Eenie meenie miney mo? Walk into the polling booth, panic and just choose anything? Presumably the same people complaining about the repercussions only becoming apparent now are those that were complaining about to many experts in the run up to the referendum.

Balls, I was bluffing!

It’s not just the ignorant masses wondering what the hell they did last night. Boris, perhaps the most aptly named politician there is, had the look of a man who, after bull-shitting his way through the interview process, has been offered the job and is now in panic mode, because the leave campaign pretty much promised that all our problems will disappear if we leave Europe. There’s going to be a lot of pissed of people out there when that doesn’t happen and they’re going to come for you Boris. In fact, the only people who aren’t going to be pissed are those who were stupid enough to believe that the entire population of Turkey was going to up sticks en mass and move to Britain.

The truly depressing thing about this is not that we voted leave (the EU does need reforming, although not by Boris and Farage), but the reasons for voting leave. It appears to be in the large as a result of an unhealthy mixture of ignorance and xenophobia. But as that gyrating geriatric Jagger once sang, you can’t always get what you want, but you might just get what you need. Perhaps the chaos and pain of a Boris led Brexit is the only way that we’ll learn. It’s for your own good!

A Sunday morning spent in Saint James Hospital ophthalmology unit was proving to be a somewhat eye opening experience (sorry!). My initial resistance proved futile as my inner voyeur took over and I listened in to the tales of woe from assorted idiots.

First up was a plasterer who had sealant in his eye “it happens all the time to plasterer’s but I’ll never wear goggles”. He’d struck up a rapport with a woman who had decided that the best thing to do for a bleeding eye was to get on a plane to Spain. She was incredulous that this had made her eye worse, but had decided against treatment and waited until she had returned home.

Eventually the conversation turned to the NHS, more specifically, the problems with funding the NHS. “Idiots like you two” I almost cried out. But no, it’s those immigrants you see! At this point I could stay silent no longer, much to the chagrin of my wife. “What about those immigrants that work in the NHS?” I queried. Well those types of immigrants are OK, but the rest cost us too much was the consensus. “Actually, the problem of health tourism is much exaggerated and isn’t really an issue at all. Do you actually think people will spend hundreds of pounds to travel here rather than just using that money for treatment in their own country?” Silence! I thought that the woman’s other eye was going to start bleeding.

After a sustained period of silence I began to feel a little smug. I’ve educated these people. I’ve overcome the red top propaganda. Alas, the pair of ignoramuses again lamented the cost of immigrants to the NHS, albeit in a much quieter fashion this time. I was not to be deterred. “Do you realise that immigrants are actually net tax contributors to the UK economy?” More silence until the calamity plasterer pipes up with “it wasn’t always that way”. “Wasn’t it? Do you have any evidence to back that statement up?” More silence until the Manuel of the plastering world was called in to see the doctor.

He left grinning 15 minutes later, giving the thumbs up that stating that his eye was “alright”. The doctor who had saved his eye sight was an immigrant, an irony that I suspect was lost on our hapless white van man.

The entire morning left me somewhat depressed. I had long suspected that the majority of the British public were idiots, now I had some confirmation of that. This is why I fear that we will Brexit. It is far easier for an idiot to blame a foreigner for all their woes, rather than look at their own stupidity. None so blind as those that won’t see.